Just under eight years ago, we here at Emojipedia hypothesized that 2018 would be a year of emoji design convergence. Today, we look back at the major emoji updates made since early 2018, covering both design convergence and purposeful design divergence.
Just under eight years ago, we here at Emojipedia hypothesized that 2018 would be a year of emoji design convergence, with various major emoji vendors' designs being revised to be much closer in composition to one another. Today, we look back at the major emoji updates made since early 2018, covering both moves toward design convergence as well as some recent instances of purposeful design divergence.
Fragmentation, Convergence, and Samsung
We opened our 2018 article with the following summary of the state of emoji designs across platforms between 2012 and 2017:
For years, different emoji sets have been causing problems in communicating a simple emotion. Send a grimace on iOS? Get a grin everywhere else. Send a grin from a Galaxy? Get an eye-roll everywhere else. This could be changing in 2018.
Described as "emoji fragmentation" by some, it was clear that various emoji vendors' designs were highly inconsistent with one another, often leading to embarrassing miscommunications.
Take, for example, what occurred for actor Jessica Chastain in early 2018 when she sent a tweet from a Samsung device that contained the 🤤 Drooling Face emoji:
Is this a Samsung thing?!
The shocked emoji is what I put in my tweet and is what I see when I go on my twitter. A friend forwarded me an article that referred to it. The emoji is completely different! Is that what all of you see? Its drooling. Now I look like a pervert... pic.twitter.com/F3aaRSBzng — Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) February 1, 2018
Given its blue gradient, it's clear Chastrain confused Samsung's 🤤 Drooling Face design at the time for the likes of the 😨 Fearful Face.
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